The 'Beta Plan'
by Ron Jeremy For President
Summary: After the fall of Reach, the remaining UNSC brass, realize their impending destruction. They must initiate the Beta Plan to ensure humanity's survival! Disclaimer: I do not not own the Halo IP.


Beta Plan

Time: January, 25th – 14:00 hours – 2556

Place: Beta Space (New Galaxy – outside of Milky-way)

The floor and walls under and around Vice Admiral John Millick gave a violent shudder as more plasma strikes came into contact with the 'Predator's' hull. The bridge lights flickered, as did some of the monitors, some went out completely. Sparks flew from shattered screens and coolant leaked from breaches in the walls. The bodies of several unfortunate crewman lined the floors, their blood pooling.

"Dean, engine status!", the admiral called back to his nav officer.

"Sir, main engines one and two are down, engine three is running at three percent, navigation thrusters are operating at ninety percent! We're not gonna be outrunning them anytime soon sir!", Lieutenant Richard Dean replied from his terminal.

"Carson, weapons status!", John looked over to his left at his weapons officer.

"Mac gun one offline, Mac gun two charging and ready in thirty, archer pods operating at seventy-one percent and chain gun systems operating at eighty-seven!", Lieutenant James Carson replied, scanning his console nervously.

"Clarke, damage report and crew update!", Admiral Millick looked to his right at his Operations officer.

"Sir we've been shaken up pretty good, hull integrity is fine for now but can't say for how long and we've got casualties piling up, we've lost entire sections of the ship due to atmos-", Lieutenant Gregory Clarke was cut off as Carter interjected.

"Mac online!... Hermes is calculating a firing solution now!", Carson yelled.

"Solution complete, you may fire when ready Admiral", came the calm reply of the AI 'Hermes', his blue translucent avatar taking the form of the Greek messenger of the gods.

"Fire!", John gave the order almost instinctively and felt a satisfactory thud reverberate through the hull as the Mac round was released and sent towards its target, one of the Covenant Corvette class stealth ships that had jumped Admiral Millick's expedition fleet.

"Direct hit!", Dean called out in triumph.

"Main view screen, now!", Millick ordered.

The image of the decimation the round had caused was evident, it had split the bulbous hull of violet alloy in two, creating a huge cloud of fire and smoke and sending debris flying in every which direction. The bridge crew gave a defiant roar of victory and the Admiral smiled to himself, two down and one to go, then on to help the rest of the fleet, _these bastards can be beat!_

However the small victory was short-lived and the crew was quickly reminded of the remaining enemies as another plasma bombardment rocked the hull of the gigantic 'Predator'.

"Sir we've lost archer missile pods 44-47 on deck 19 and three crewman were caught in the last salvo!", Clarke announced, sounding alarmed.

"Give me a status update on our fighters out there!", John ordered.

"We still have three of the five squadrons of Long swords out there and two of the three squadrons of interceptors, as well as two of the four squadrons of shortswords, I can recall them if you wish captain", cam the reply of Hermes as his avatar flickered back onto its projection pad, near the Captain's seat.

"No keep them out there, how much damage have they done?", John asked.

"They've failed to breach the remaining Corvette's shields, they simply don't have the fire power to break through, however they are doing a good job of holding back enemy boarding craft and fighters, the few that have made it past their net have been successfully gunned down by our Helix chain gun system", the AI replied.

"Take that back, recall the bombers, keep the fighters and interceptors out there! Carson make sure we're concentrating all our fire power on that remaining corvette, its small and won't last long under combined fire!"

"Aye sir, all missile pods are currently targeting the remaining Covie ship, but we still have three minutes until the MAC comes online", Carson replied.

"Dump power from the engines into the MAC, speed it up!", John barked.

"Sir, that will severely limit our maneuvering capab-", Dean started.

"Do it!", John cut him off, looking back at Carson.

"Rerouting power from engines… MAC charge time reduced to forty-five seconds", Carson stated.

"Sir remaining shortsword squads have boarded successfully!", Clarke announced.

"MAC ready!", Carson roared.

"Fire!", John barked.

A second shudder left another satisfactory feeling in John's gut as once again a metal slug was propelled at near FTL speeds towards the alien bastards who had been glassing countless human colonies.

"Covenant shields down! The round penetrated!... Their still up… but their main engine is gone as well, their sitting ducks!", Dean cheered, a smile creeping onto his face.

The bridge crew watched with satisfaction as the Archer missile pods continued to fire at their target, beating its hull and setting entire sections aflame. The Covenant vessel initiated one last feeble plasma attack, with most of its weapons offline only a few streaks of blue plasma escaped the ship. Dean dodged most of them with skillful control of the thrusters and only one managed to curve successfully and make contact with the hull, but failed to inflict any serious damage.

The missile pods continued to hammer away at the crippled alien ship, its hull splitting and smoke emanating from multiple locations along its body. Most of the ship was black and silent, dead, until finally the last lights flickered and died. The 'Predator' fired one more salvo of missiles to make certain that the alien ship really was dead. The Sangheli preferred to be honorable and only engage in open combat, but that didn't put their entire race off using dirty tactics, there could be surviving crewmembers on board the ship playing dead or just trapped, Millick had learned the hard way that some of the Sangheli were not as honorable and courageous as some of their leaders, through their rants about human heresy, had made such a point of.

"Sir receiving a message from the Destroyer ' Death Valley', Captain Harper says they are taking fire and their main weapons systems are offline, he is requesting aid", Lieutenant-Commander Frederick Benson, the Communications officer and executive officer announced.

"Dean, Carson?", John asked, looking between the both of them.

"Sir, our ordinance for our pods is running low and even with the main engines shut down, the MAC will take about ten minutes to cool and re-charge, time I don't think we have in capitol ship combat", Carson answered first.

"Dean, Clarke, how long till we get there?", John asked now looking at his Nav and Operations officers.

"Off our Nav thrusters, a few minutes", Dean stated.

"Four minutes to be precise", Hermes enhanced Dean's statement and Dean gave him a scowl. _Humans, too much pride, if you ask me, _Hermes thought to himself.

"Ship seems in good enough condition to get us there and survive a fight with a single, occupied Corvette considering the previous ambush we just endured", Clarke answered.

"Get to it then", Millick ordered.

The Predator hummed with motion as the Nav thrusters turned her in direction of the Death Valley's current engagement and the vibration grew as the thrusters strained to push the massive vessel as fast as they possibly could.

"Admiral, reports are coming in from the rest of the fleet, we're on the verge of winning, the Covenant forces only consisted of Corvettes and their numbers weren't great enough, looks like we're going to take the day!", Benson informed the bridge crew and they all seemed to relax slightly at this.

"Good news son, but we have to stay focused on the task at hand, we'll take care of this current ship then we'll see where at and well have chance to count our heads and our scars", Millick replied, he new that the most dangerous part of being close to victory was slacking, not a common problem in the days of romantic cavalry charges supported by the music of drums and horns. Those days were long gone and now were the times of men who did care about glory, but of whom were willing to take the 'easy' option to get it.

Within minutes the 'Predator', in its great form was baring down upon the (according to the reports still coming in) final Covenant Corvette.

"We'll be in firing range in twenty… We're in range, calculating firing solutions!", Carson announced.

"Fire!", John ordered.

"Benson, get me Harper", Millick said, looking up at the view screen.

The sound of missiles streaking towards their target could be heard very faintly in the background as Captain Harper, a bulky, ageing and bald man with a Captain's insignia and many medals decorating the chest of his uniform came on the Admiral's personal chair-video screen.

"The cavalry is here Captain", John said, smiling into the screen.

"Good to see you, thought we were goners, anyways we've already reduced their shields significantly, shouldn't be long until our combined fire brings 'em down, then we can finish 'em off!", the hoarse voice of the Captain sounded relieved and a grin managed to cross Harper's face.

"Agreed, we'll have our MAC online soon as well", John replied.

"Carson, how long"

"Four minutes, roughly sir"

Streaks of orange crossed the space between the two dark brown titanium human ships and the violet insect-like Covenant ship, causing the Corvette's shields to flicker and pulse a brilliant bright blue. The Covenant ship's shields weren't quite depleted but a few missiles breached its shields and began to explode on its hull surface.

The shipmaster of the Covenant ship was either extremely brave or may have just realized he really had no other options because what he chose to do caught both the Admiral and the Captain off guard. He had switched all power from his weapons, shields and everything into the Corvette's engines and was moving on a collision course with the destroyer, he was trying to ram the Captain Harper, he was trying to go down taking another ship with him.

"They're heading straight for us!", Harper cried out.

"Attempt to maneuver out of their path!", John replied.

The bridge crew of the Predator watched as the Corvette moved at incredible speed towards the Destroyer who's thrusters were firing up in a desperate attempt to escape its wrath.

"Lieutenant Dean, move us away!", Hermes said.

"What are you tal-", John started.

"Admiral, over-ridden, Dean get us out now!", Hermes cut the Admiral off.

Dean typed furiously at his controls, trying desperately to get them as far away from the engagement as possible.

The view screen was taken up completely by a bright white light, and the Predator shuddered violently again, then the shaking stopped.

"The Covenant Corvette's reactors went critical, on purpose I believe", Hermes stated, matter-of-factly.

"How'd you see it coming?", Millick asked, shaking his head, which was in his hands.

"It was obvious, was it not, the Sangheli like to go down fighting, you tell me how many option you would've had were you in his position?", Hermes asked.

"And the ship?", John continued.

"Lost in the explosion sir", Dean answered, his voice deep and sullen.

"Did we take any damage?"

"Some armor-plating on the star-board side was melted down and some of our sensors were fired from the heat wave", Clarke answered, "but otherwise nothing significant"

"Benson any more news from the fleet?", John asked, standing up and moving towards a viewport to gaze out at the stars.

"Yes sir, and for the most part it looks good, we rounded up the remaining stealth ships and actually managed to board a disabled one, ODSTs are in the process of fighting their way through it. However during the fighting we lost two frigates, two freighters, a civilian shuttle and a science vessel", Benson answered.

"Contact the 'Santa Maria', let me know are status and that we're on our way to regroup with them", John ordered.

"Aye sir", Benson and Dean replied in unison.

"And well done crew, you did good out there", John finished.

They had been through a long fight, they had lost good people, and some good ships and the Predator herself had taken a fair amount of punishment. They now had to deal with the problem of finding a new world to settle in out in 'Beta Space', their expedition had been sent out on a massive-length slip space to leave the Milky-way in search of surviving humanity. They had to find resources to feed their people, fuel, repair and arm their ships.

_We'll find somewhere, we've got to._


End file.
